This piece of pipe is a flow meter. It is a respirator part, an essential part, which wears out very quickly and which has become untraceable on the market. It took two weeks for Safran Aeroboosters engineers to copy it. The company will provide it free of charge to hospitals that need it.
MEDICAL EQUIPMENT BY AN AIRCRAFT ENGINEER
This flow meter is used to monitor the amount of air that enters the patient’s lungs. With the epidemic, hospitals were in danger of running out. Today, this risk is disappearing. “Just under two weeks after starting our studies on this replacement flow meter”, says François Lepot, CEO of Safran Aeroboosters, “We just managed to get a cloned part to work on a respirator. And it works just like the original part. We bought equipment so that we can produce a hundred right now.”
The work was difficult, “because the flowmeter includes many different components and we have to recreate it without having any basic equipment. This is not our specialty since we are in aeronautics and not in medical. But we has dissected the part, understood how it worked, bought or manufactured all the components ourselves to arrive at manufacturing exactly the same, which must operate with the same precision.
A TUBE OF A FEW CENTIMETERS
The part is plastic and metal, “there is silicone, it is a tube which is ten centimeters long, two or three centimeters in diameter, with wires inside which allow, by electrical resistance, to measure the quantity of air which goes through the machine.
Several dozen people and several companies worked to get there. They first measured in detail what the piece was, what made it up. “They then analyzed all the micro-components that are inside, then they tried to recreate the part, either by 3D printing, or by purchasing material on the world market, or by addressing Belgian companies that can produce equivalent components.
A STOCK WIREÉ IN NEW YORK … IN CONTAINMENT
We very quickly went for 3D printing of the easiest parts, on the other hand for sensitive components inside, we had to go look for them abroad or recreate them with other Walloon companies. We stumbled for a few days on the resistance wire that was stored in New York. ” In the end, it was with a thread found in England that they managed to make something equivalent.
The request for a replacement flow meter came from the CHC group in Liège. “So it is for them that we will do it. The room is specific to a very specific type of respirator. Any other hospital that has this respirator and supply problems may have our copy. Our goal is not to help only the CHC, but to make sure that the whole of Belgium has respirators that run continuously in the coming weeks. ”
IT’S FREE
All of these deliveries will be free, Safran announces. “Our goal is not to do business, it’s just to lend a hand.” About fifty people, all professions combined, worked on the project. “They are paid for this work. They are workers, employees, engineers, who all worked with good heart, all extremely enthusiastic”.
Safran also lends staff directly to hospitals: “We help them get missing equipment. We have overseas subsidiaries and supply chain world champions, people who are used to finding missing parts from all suppliers. I donated as a challenge for my teams to find what nobody can find. In a number of cases, we have managed to find stocks in China, the USA or Australia, which are in the process of moving to the Belgium to compensate for certain shortages in certain hospitals.
A FIRST CLON FLOWMETERALREADY WORKS
It is a method that is very effective because there, we have the original equipment and we do not have the time necessary to qualify the products as we just did with the flow meter. ”
The first flowmeter, the one that has been tested, already works now on a CHC respirator. Since this one has passed the tests, Safran Aeroboosters is ready to start production.
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